At The Threshold
by Cadence
Summary: A midnight conversation between fools. Angst.


At the Threshold

"You're a fool."

She was standing - leaning - in the short doorway of the box the hotel manager had deemed fit for a known outlaw when she said it, her words cool but bitter on her lips. The meager orange light of the hallway outlined her small body vaguely through her faded nightclothes, doing little more than declaring presence. Her colorless eyes were the only distinct feature in the illusion of midnight solitude, the only thing fixed in the world Vash was seeing. Blinking at her with no memory of waking, the indistinct vision standing a few feet away causing doubt as to whether he actually _was_ awake, he pulled himself into a sitting position and pondered her from crumpled sheets.

Her fingers idly stroked along the rim of her steaming mug, calmly tasting its heat with the delicate - nervous? - movement. Her expression was hidden to him in half-shadows, but he knew from the softly detached tone that it was probably unlike any he'd ever seen on her pale features before.

He nodded distantly, aware that those gleaming eyes could see his every movement, had been watching him since before he wakened, "I know."

The words drifted in the chill room, somehow independent of her statement; somehow a reassurance and a threat at the same time. An invisible element changed at this, the thin ice of her calm cracking somewhat at the sound of his voice.

Her dark eyes didn't waver from the study of him, didn't water or close or shift, but the light changed, and he for the first time saw lie in her tone, the conflicted, raw emotion in the depths of endless grey.

"You don't know me," her voice was suddenly rough, a whisper-quiet catch of liquid sound in the darkness.

Futilely, he grasped after that statement as it slipped away into the cracks between dream and reality. He wondered why she was there. What she wanted.

Unthinking, or perhaps thinking too much, with ruthlessness he rarely displayed, he spoke, "And you don't know me."

He saw her flinch, a guarded moment that was nonetheless undeniable. The ice, or her protection, or whatever it was she was hiding behind in this surreal, unnatural scene, cracked a little further.

Waiting for her next statement, her next pained declaration that would never have survived in light of sun scorched hours, Vash felt a shiver of realization run down his spine. She'd been like this since his return, their reunion; an aching wound concealed by familiarity and evasion tearing at her with every word and joke that pretended normalcy.

A sound Vash recognized as a sob came from the doorway. He stared for a moment, paralyzed by fear, by the hope that this episode, which had so far unfolded ignorant of his intentions, would correct itself.

And then he came back to himself, angry at his own cowardice and aware that he _did_ have an influence on this woman's emotions, on her pain. He couldn't shirk his responsibilities to her, couldn't allow her to suffer, to sob in his doorway.

Not when the reason she was here wasn't about her cutting words to him, wasn't about the false calm she'd been trying to maintain in the past minutes, or the equally pained irritation of the past few days. Not when it was the middle of the night and he didn't know if either of them was actually there. Not when she was crying in choked little sobs and trying not to spill her tea and looking so fragile and ridiculous and tragic in the small space of his doorway.

Not when he didn't want to.

On his knees before her, easing her to the floor and the cup from her hands, he hated himself for an instant.

Vash wasn't blind, or oblivious. He knew how she felt about him. He'd known before he'd left, and he'd known every night as he lay under Lina's roof trying to maintain the refuge he'd carved out for himself there. Hurt and broken, then it had been just one of many ways to torture himself.

But that wasn't true anymore. He didn't need to be hide, he didn't want to hide. But he was. From her.

Because he was afraid.

He was afraid and so tired and so disillusioned that he'd ignored her feelings just as much as his own, still too lost to think that anything other than agony would result from an admission.

Vash was right, of course. He saw the proof of it in front of him, curled into herself physically just as she was emotionally. This was an admission.

Unsure of what to do, unsure whether he could take this step, if he could give to her and himself what he'd for so long denied, his motions were hesitant at first. Nervous hands brushed against her quivering arms, causing her eyes to meet his sharply. They sat like that a moment, neither willing to cross that threshold, she afraid to leave the doorway and he to leave the sanctuary in his room.

Tears as audible in her voice as they were visible on her streaked face, she breathed, "But I want you to. I want to."

Vash swallowed the emotion that swelled at the earnest, vulnerable look in her determined eyes. He knew that this was what it all came down to, if he could accept her, accept that _she_ accepted him. He'd wondered for so long if he would have the courage to say yes, to understand the emotions that drove her to scenes like this one, to more than just _want_ to wipe away the wet stains on her beautiful face.

To fall in love with her.

He was at that vital choice, between expectation and hope, and, until that moment, even he hadn't known what his decision would be.

But it was that look in her eyes, the one from when he might still have been dreaming, of that emotion he couldn't identify. He didn't know what it was, but it was there and it was strong and his denying it was hurting the both of them.

And that had to mean something.

Reaching out more confidently, he gently coaxed her closer, into his room because he knew that in between could never work out. With her nestled tenderly against his chest, his check resting on her soft, dark hair, he confessed, "So do I. I want to know you, too, Meryl. So do I."

And she pressed more tightly into his embrace, mumbling something that he couldn't hear, but didn't need to because she wasn't crying anymore.

And that was enough.

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endnote: um, yeah. I'm just gonna apologize right now for this, since I have no _idea_ where it came from. Believe it or not, when I started, I planned on writing a comedy. I obviously failed miserably. No, I don't think the characters are really this messed up, or, at least, I think they hide it better. OOC-ness I attribute to the fact that this was written before I saw vol. 6. So there.

Trigun is copyright (c) Yasuhiro Nightow and Young King Ours. 

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